Page 6 of I Do, I Do, I Do
Clara sighed. She was big, but not as big as she would be if Hugo Bosch had his way. She was big shouldered, big breasted, big hipped, and she had big hands. But she curved in where she should and out where she should; she wasn’t fat. Her papa had said she was a good German girl, big boned and a beauty. But, as far as she knew, no one else had thought her a beauty until Jean Jacques Villette.
“I have to meet the stage,” she said gently, placing her hand on Hugo’s sleeve. He meant well, she knew that. And who could say? Maybe if Jean Jacques hadn’t swept her off her feet…maybe she would eventually have married the best strudel she’d ever tasted and Hugo Bosch would have married her inn. Maybe she would have persuaded herself that it didn’t matter that he couldn’t recall her eye color or that he thought wives deserved an occasional beating.
She left him standing under the maple tree biting on his cigar and hurried inside to remove her apron, smooth her skirts, and pat down her flyaway hair. Then she arranged a smile on her lips and stepped out on the front veranda to greet her guests.
Only one woman climbed down from the stage, which made Clara decide that she had sold the inn not a moment too soon. In her papa’s time, the stage had arrived twice daily and deposited a half dozen guests on the inn’s doorstep at each stop.
Suppressing a sigh, she examined the slender woman who had turned to look beyond the inn toward a sweeping view of the sea. The woman impressed Clara as anxious and nervous, but she didn’t know why. Her guest was smartly turned out in a well-cut traveling suit that appeared to defy wrinkles. Beneath a small, neat hat, every hair was perfectly in place, her gloves were immaculate, and she didn’t fidget.
“She’s the only one?” Clara asked Ole Peterson after he’d placed the woman’s tapestry bags on the veranda.
“The rest of the passengers are continuing on,” Ole said. He sounded apologetic.
Clara nodded and wished him a safe trip, hesitated, then walked across the lawn to join her guest. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked pleasantly, glancing toward the ocean.
“It’s amazing. Wonderful. Magnificent. Words fail me.” She glanced at Clara, then back at the ocean. “The colors are so vivid here in Oregon. The blues aren’t as blue nor the greens as green in California, I’m sure of it. And the ocean! My husband promised I would love the sea, but I never imagined it would be so big, so overwhelming, or so fascinating.”
As the Pacific had always been in Clara’s backyard, she tended to take it for granted. Seeing the landscape anew through her guests’ eyes was always a refreshing experience.
“This must be your first trip to the coast.”
The woman’s slender figure stiffened, and her spine pulled ramrod straight. She folded her gloved hands one over the other at her waist and frowned straight ahead.
Clara had seen this before. Stuffy little women who mistook friendliness for prying because the silly books on etiquette said a person didn’t discuss personal matters with strangers, didn’t reveal anything of themselves.
“Well,” Clara said, watching dots of color burning on the woman’s cheeks. “Please come inside. I have a room I think you’ll find to your liking. Dinner will be served in the dining room promptly at seven. You’ll have time to freshen up.”
“You are the proprietor?”
“Yes.” Until tomorrow when the new owners arrived. She paused on the veranda to collect the woman’s tapestry bags.
“Shouldn’t you call someone to handle the bags?”
“There’s no need,” Clara said brightly. “I’m not a little thing like you.” She could almost hear Papa saying:My Clara, she’s as strong as an ox. He’d been gone for almost two years, but she still missed him. She wished they could sit down together over steins of beer and she could explain why she’d sold the inn.
She led the way past Papa’s cuckoo clocks and Mama’s collection of tiny china cups into a homey lobby where she set down the tapestry bags and stepped behind the counter.
Apparently the woman from the stage hadn’t arranged her own accommodations often enough to be comfortable with the process. She blushed deeply and didn’t meet Clara’s gaze.
“I wonder…” The color deepened in the woman’s cheeks, and she blinked rapidly, her words coming in an anguished rush. “I know this will sound like a strange request, but I wonder if I might examine your guest book from nine months ago. You see, there’s someone who might have stayed at your inn. It would be helpful to me to know if he did stay here.”
All was explained. Clara would have wagered the money in the cash drawer that the woman’s husband had left her and that she was attempting to find him. She had heard this sad tale before. There wasn’t much that she had not seen while growing up in the hostelry business.
Sympathy softened her gaze. The poor soul wasn’t a beauty, but who was? She was pretty in a cautious sort of way, as if she felt it more virtuous not to turn men’s heads. Clara thought the woman’s eyes were her best feature. She had lovely, heavily lashed gray eyes—one might even say soulful eyes. Certainly she had a sense of style. Her traveling ensemble was well coordinated and the quality of workmanship was good. But Clara sensed her guest’s timidity and discomfort. This woman traveled alone out of necessity, not by choice. And asking after her husband was clearly agony for her.
Carefully suppressing any hint of pity, Clara turned the register to face the woman and extended a pen, saying, “Of course you can examine the register from last year. I’d be happy to show—” She stopped talking and stared.
The woman’s horrified gaze had fixed on Clara’s wedding ring. She gripped the edge of the counter as if to hold herself upright and the color abruptly drained from her face, leaving her as white as a new towel.
“Your ring!” She sounded as if she were strangling.
“It’s my wedding ring,” Clara explained slowly, wondering if the woman was having some sort of fit. “It’s a family heirloom. My husband’s grandfather designed the ring, and his grandmother wore it all her married life. Then his mother wore it.”
The woman shook her head. “No. This can’t be. No.”
“Ma’am? Can I get you something? Aglass of water?”
“You don’t understand. But look.” She tore at her gloves, clawing at her left hand. “It has to be a coincidence. Yes, that’s it, it must be a very strange coincidence.” She thrust out a shaking hand and the counter lamp gleamed down on her wedding ring. Clara gasped, and her heart stopped beating. Her eyes widened until they ached.
